CHEYENNE — A judge has added a second coal lease to an environmentalist lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service that contests Wyoming coal mining on grounds that include climate change.

The Forest Service argued for the lease to be litigated separately, but U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson granted the request by WildEarth Guardians, the Sierra Club and the Powder River Basin Resource Council to add the lease to their lawsuit. Doing so would neither delay the case nor confuse the issues, Johnson wrote soon after holding a hearing on the request Thursday.

The lawsuit will now contest two coal tracts containing more than a billion tons of coal reserves in the Powder River Basin. The groups initially sued over the South Porcupine coal tract, which holds 402 million tons of federal coal reserves. The North Porcupine coal tract also will be part of the lawsuit. It holds 721 million tons of coal.

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